W. Tennis is Sweet Sixteen

Don’t fault Harvard sophomore Courtney Bergman if she felt a little stressed down the stretch of the women’s tennis team’s NCAA second round match against 16th-seeded Arizona on Saturday.

As she started the third set against Emilie Scribot, the nation’s fifth-ranked player, the team score was tied at three. As a hundred-strong crowd converged to watch her match in the sunset, Bergman realized that the host Crimson’s chances of advancing to the NCAA Championship round of 16 in Gainesville, Fla. rested entirely on her shoulders.

“I saw everyone on the bleachers come over to my court and I was like, ‘oh, my gosh’,” Bergman said. “For such a big thing to go to Gainesville, I just felt so much pressure.”

Bergman—the underdog as the nation’s No. 46 player—said she was so tight she could barely swing through a ball.

With the third set even at 3-3, Scribot took a lead 40-15, but Bergman played cleanly thereafter and forced Scribot to beat her.

While Bergman was stressed, Scribot was a wreck. She made one error after another, and Bergman cruised to the decisive 6-3, 3-6, 6-3 upset, punching Harvard’s ticket to Gainesville.

“[Scribot] had all the shots, but she didn’t have Courtney’s toughness—that’s what it really came down to,” Harvard coach Gordon Graham said. “She had a great game, but there’s more to it than the shots. It’s the mental toughness. Bergman’s got that over anyone practically.”

The victory propelled the unseeded, 17th-ranked Crimson (19-3) into the Sweet 16, where it will face No. 1 Stanford on Thursday. By beating Arizona (10-12), seeded No. 16 by the NCAA and ranked No. 22 by the ITA, Harvard became one of just two unseeded teams to advance past the second round. The Crimson beat Big 12 champion and No. 23 Oklahoma State (17-7) 4-1 in Friday’s first round.

While Stanford poses a difficult challenge, Graham pointed out that Harvard beat Arizona, which beat California, which dealt Stanford its only defeat.

“[In Gainesville], anything can happen,” Graham said.

Arizona’s weakness this season had been the lower half of its singles lineup. Harvard exploited the Wildcats at No. 4 and No. 6, with its freshmen rising to the challenge. Eva Wang played textbook tennis in trouncing her opponent 6-1, 6-0 nearly two hours before Bergman finally clinched the victory.

In an equally impressive effort, Melissa Anderson mixed spotless play with finesse to come from behind and topple her much more physically imposing, harder-hitting foe 7-6 (7-4), 6-1 at sixth singles.

But nothing went according to plan for Harvard at No. 5, where captain Sanja Bajin fell for the first time this spring after 19 matches. She had been struggling with a back injury she sustained on Tuesday and played only thirty minutes of tennis between then and the Arizona match.

“If Sanja had been playing her normal stuff and been healthy, I don’t think it would even have come down to Bergman,” Graham said. “She would have won back there and this would have been over a long time ago.”

Bajin’s day started to go wrong in doubles when she tweaked her injury. She and sophomore Alexis Martire jumped out to a 4-0 lead, but found themselves in trouble after allowing the Wildcat’s team to claw its way back and tie the match at six.

With the No. 2 pair struggling, Harvard’s No. 1 and No. 3 doubles teams stepped up to earn the doubles point. The top duo of Bergman and sophomore Susanna Lingman cruised to an 8-3 win, while freshmen Wang and Anderson overcame an early 0-4 deficit to win 8-6 at No. 3. That victory was all the more impressive considering that the Arizona pair had gone 8-1 this season, drawing protest from much of the Pac-10, which believed them to be truly the Wildcats’ No. 2 tandem.

While Bajin’s injury hindered her against Arizona, it kept her out entirely against Oklahoma State. It was no matter, though, as the Crimson cruised through the first round.

Harvard swept the doubles point despite bumping Wang and Anderson to second doubles in Bajin’s absence.

In singles, Lingman, Wang and Anderson won first to seal the victory. With Anderson elevated to No. 5, freshman Alli Pillinger filled in at No. 6 and suffered Harvard’s only defeat of the day.

Graham admitted the Crimson’s home-court advantage over the weekend made a difference.

“Did it win the match for us? It probably made that little edge,” Graham said. “At home, sleeping in your own bed, the fans were great. It helped a lot.”

—Staff writer Sean W. Coughlin can be reached at coughl@fas.harvard.edu.

—Staff writer David R. De Remer can be reached at remer@fas.harvard.edu.